Work Matters

"The transition to parenthood is one of the most life-altering and destabilizing life events that adults experience, even those with significant financial and social resources. We commonly hear about dual-career, professional couples coping with the wage penalties associated with new motherhood or a woman's career being derailed on the 'mommy track.' But we know much less about how low-wage, employed mothers and fathers manage the demands of full-time work and new parenthood, despite the fact that this group makes up the largest portion of working parents in the country. In Work Matters, Maureen Perry-Jenkins examines the workplaces of low-income workers as a critical but often overlooked social setting that shapes family life and child development. Building on years of research and over 1,500 interviews with new mothers, fathers, and their children from the first year of parenthood through six-years postpartum, Perry-Jenkins examines how work conditions help or hinder new parents' abilities to engage as partners and parents, and the consequences for children. She argues that parents' job conditions-workplace policies, hours, and schedules, experiences of autonomy and job pressure, and workplace social supports-directly affect the healthy development of infants and children. She uncovers the job conditions that diminish new parents' ability to care for their infants and highlights the conditions of low-wage work that enhance parenting and child outcomes. In the final chapter of the book, she offers recommendations for parents, employers, and policy makers that benefit all, especially the children"--